The Neil Cowley Trio have been leaders and shapers of the current vogue for hard-driving piano trios that can rock an ambient or a house beat through blending genres and musical textures in big songs. Always a great act to catch live, this CD (the trio’s 6th), finds them in a more reflective mood. Cowley’s playing is melancholic at times with gentle support from Jenkins and Horan (although the familiar bombast is there in plenty on ‘The Sharks of Competition’) while Abrahams brings some inspired menace to the proceedings with his electronics and echo-drenched guitar.The collection of pieces on this CD form a soundtrack to a story of the life of Lincoln (not the president but a man-ape whose diary can be read on http://lincolnsdiary.tumblr.com). It is not giving too much away to reveal that Lincoln becomes a spacebound ape, and track titles such as ‘Weightless’ and ‘Echo Nebula’ hint at this. You can also experience the set in multimedia form at http://spaceboundapes.com/ which mixes music, comic book images, text and spoken word. The unfolding diary gives a lovely sense of intrigue to Lincoln’s story and his life and times. The diary has a feel of a rain-soaked, post-industrial landscape and the pieces in this set capture this marvellously. Any futurology tends to be a distorted echo of the writer’s present day, and this is true of the tale of Lincoln here. The space-bound ape on the cover is, I’m guessing, inspired by 1960s Soviet cosmonaut chimpanzees or perhaps the US chimp called Ham who went into space in 1961. And so, the vision of the future at play here is inspired by the sci-fi comics of the 1960s and 1970s and there are some echoes of ‘spaciness’ in the tracks (including what sounds like a convincing reworking of Kraftwerk, ‘The City and the Stars’). However, what is apparent is that there is a depth to the pieces as they explore not just some kitsch vision of animals in space, but also more thought-provoking themes of responsibility, scientific development and relationships.

The cover shows an ape in an astronaut (cosmonaut) helmet. He has a proud and serious expression on its face. Pride (and hubris) plays a role in Lincoln’s diary and there is a tender exploration of the ways in which his experiences play out across the pieces here. In the diary, Lincoln is, at one point asked ‘have you ever been in love?’ and his response to this question (and the revelations that this leads to) seals his fate. The beautiful, tender ‘Grace’ (track 5) has already enjoyed a life of its own away from this collection. This was released as a single – and, as if the very idea of releasing a single from a jazz album isn’t weird enough, it has been very successful in ambient and relaxation charts as well as receiving airplay across a broad range of radio shows. It is to Neil Cowley’s credit that he can produce music that is not only cross-over in its inspirations but also in its reach to audiences; and there is always a truth in the adage that there is only good music. This CD contains much very good music and wrapping this in a concept album with tumblr diary and the spaceboundapes website setting out the story of the music’s hero only served to heighten my listening pleasure.

Reviewed by Chris Baber

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